The preparatory workshop was designed to facilitate the questions, themes, approaches and methods that could inform a collaborative and comparative investigation into the long term economic outcomes that flowed from a major conjuncture in European and global economic history. That famous conjuncture was marked by revolutions in France and other countries, interludes of disorder and instability and above all by 23 years of geopolitical warfare and was formally terminated by a far reaching peace settlement at Vienna in 1815.
Our papers and discussion concentrated upon conceptual and theoretical literature from the social sciences concerned with outcomes for long term economic growth that flowed from the engagements of states and their economies in early modern warfare, references to analyses of economic effects pertaining to previous wars and to 20thcentury conflicts among the European states and comparisons and contrasts from engagements in revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that can be found in historical literatures of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal and the Americas. Our stated and underlined aim is to ascertain what is accessible in secondary sources that address the question of outcomes for particular countries and for the international economy as a whole. We agreed that our separable but comparable contributions for an edited publication finds a model in the recently published volume of essays on the history of capitalism by Neal and Wiliamson for CUP.
Networking
Networking will take several forms.
1. Regular communications by email among all members of the team
2. The maintenance of the “Waterloo” website that will display:
a) the network’s mission;
b) the contact addresses of participants;
c) draft papers written by the team and its corresponding associates
d) an annotated bibliography of useful publications concerned with connexions between war and economic development
e) references to academics working on comparable themes and problems
f) reports of bilateral visits among core members of the network
g) plans for the Lisbon workshop and London conference
3. The Lisbon Workshop
Coordinated by Jaime Reis (and Loraine Long) the second conference has, by agreement, been scheduled for Thursday 07 and Friday 08 April, 2016. The provisional programme includes the presentation and discussion of pre-circulated draft papers dealing with national case studies for Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and the international economy for the Thursday; for the Netherlands, the Americas, Germany and the UK on the Friday, when the workshop will close by 18.00.
Sessions designed to optimise feedback and debate will last for 90 minutes. They will follow the model of a 15 minute presentation followed by 15 minute critiques by two preselected respondents for each paper.
4. The London Conference
The final conference (coordinated by Patrick O’Brien and Loraine Long) is currently scheduled for two days during the summer before the closing date of the Network’s programme (01 September 2017). The London Conference (held at LSE) will be attended by the Network participants, nominated associates and stakeholders, invited experts and representatives from CUP and the BBC. Penultimate drafts for chapters will be presented and discussed. Hopefully a manuscript prepared for publication will be with a / the Press by 01 May 2018.